Khojaly Tragedy an international view

Khojaly Tragedy an international view

Tale Heydarov Taleh Baghiyev

...Survivors reported that Armenian soldiers shot and bayoneted more than 450 Azeris, many of them women and children. Hundreds, possibly thousand, were missing and feared dead.
...By late yesterday, 479 deaths had been registered at the morgue in Agdam, and 29 bodies had been buried in the cemetery. Of the seven corpses I saw awaiting burial, two were children and three were women, one shot through the chest at point blank range.

-THOMAS GOLTZ, journalist, USA

...As we swooped low over the snow-covered hills of Nagorno-Karabagh we saw the scattered corpses.
Apparently, the refugees had been shot down as they ran. An Azerbaijani film of the places we flew over, shown to journalists afterwards, showed dozens of corpses lying in various parts of the hills.
...More than sixty bodies, including those of women and children, have been spotted on hillsides in Nagorno-Karabakh, confirming claims that Armenian troops massacred Azeri refugees. Hundreds are missing. Scattered amid the withered grass and bushes along a small valley and across the hillside beyond are the bodies of last Wednesday's massacre by Armenian forces of Azerbaijani refugees. In all, 31 bodies could be counted at the scene. At least another 31 have been taken into Agdam over the past five days. These figures do not include civilians reported killed when the Armenians stormed the Azerbaijani town of Khodjaly on Tuesday night.

-ANATOL LIEVEN, journalist, UK

...We happened to be witnesses to the Khodjali massacre, we saw the dead bodies of hundreds of civilians-women, children, old people and defenders of Khojaly. We managed to fly by helicopter; we were taking photo-graphs of everything we saw around Khojaly at the height of a bird's flight. However, the Armenians started shooting at our helicopter and we couldn't manage to finish our job. That was a terrible scene. I had heard a lot about wars, about the cruelty of German fascists, but the Armenians outdid them, killing five-or six-year-old children, innocent people. We saw a lot of injured people in hospitals, carriages, even in kindergartens and school buildings.

-JEAN-YVES JUNET, journalist, France

The Khojaly massacre is impossible to justify. Near Nakhichevanik village where we could hardly get by helicopter I saw many disfigured corpses. These were not soldiers but civilian inhabitants of Khojaly who were trying to get to Aghdam through the Armenians' heavy fire.